King Abdullah's bleak forecast

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Jordan’s King Abdullah II voiced alarm and frustration over Israel’s determination to throttle every promise for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.

“I am not convinced that they (Israel) are interested in a two-state solution… They are not interested in peace with the Arabs, because unless they do the two-state solution, that can’t happen.”

The king lamented the futility of the peace process, saying he is the most pessimistic he has ever been in 11 years.

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“2011 will be, I think, a very bad year for peace. Invariably when there’s a status quo, usually what shakes everybody up is some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces. Nobody wins in a war.”

When asked about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s latest visit to Washington, King Abdullah said, “Netanyahu basically came to say, ‘it is my way or the highway.'”

King Abdullah doesn’t mince words and he can’t be accused of harbouring extremist attitudes toward Israel and the peace process.

In fact, one can safely say the king has always demonstrated a deep devotion to the cause of peace in the region even to the extent of alienating some of his erstwhile loyal citizens who must have felt that Jordan was going too far in normalizing relations with Israel and accommodating Israel’s whims and fantasies.

That is while the “Jewish” state was relentlessly pursuing ethnic cleansing schemes in Jerusalem and arrogating more Arab land in the West Bank for settlement expansion.

Indeed, one of the main underlying reasons for recent street demonstrations in Amman stemmed from public dissatisfaction with Jordan’s perceived flaccid discourse toward Israeli insolence and rejectionism.

In this light, King Abdullah’s remarks ought to be accorded ample attention if only because these remarks come from a man who knows what he is saying.

It  is unlikely though that such warnings will make much  of an impression on the  manifestly arrogant Israeli government which is ironically  demonstrating its “goodwill”  for  peace  by demolishing more Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, building more colonies for fanatical Jewish settlers  on stolen  Palestinian land and  by promulgating brazenly racist and fascist laws that would be criminalized  in any other country that respects itself.

Indeed, one can be sure that Israel has only one policy toward the very idea of peace with its Arab neighbours, especially the Palestinians.

This policy can be summarized in one word: provocation. One Israeli newspaper opined recently that Israel wouldn’t get herself involved in any peace process if it knew it wouldn’t be able to kill it.

Indeed, while the concept of lebensraum is what honestly characterizes the long-standing Israeli approach vis-à-vis the territorial issue in the West Bank, ethnic cleansing is the real policy Israel harbours toward non-Jews in Palestine-Israel.

This is the main reason behind Israel’s insistence that Palestinians and Arabs must recognize Israel as a “Jewish state” in the context of any prospective peace agreement.

But what is a Jewish state supposed to mean in real and honest terms? Well, Israeli propagandists, apologists and mouthpieces, who practice lying as often as they breathe the oxygen of life, would fill the ether with all sorts of babbling and blathering about Israel being a Jewish and democratic state.

However, even Palestinian kids living in the state that claims to be “the light unto the nations” know too well that Israel can’t be Talmudic and truly democratic at the same time since the two constitute an eternal oxymoron.

Moreover, treating non-Jews as second-class citizens in the contemplated Jewish utopia is not really the end of the story for the paragons of mendacity and racism in Tel Aviv.

Their ultimate goal goes far beyond merely legislating and perpetuating obscene racism against non-Jews whom the increasingly powerful religious establishment in Israel would prefer to have them enslaved by the “Chosen People” as carriers of water and hewers of wood.

Today, the real undeclared goal of Zionism toward millions of Muslim and Christian Palestinians is simply transfer, a euphemism for a conceivably genocidal expulsion.

This is certainly the ideology of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) and the bulk of right-wing and religious parties making up the current coalition government in Israel. It is more or less a genocidal ideology that offers the poor Gentiles living under the rule of the “only true democracy in the Middle East” the choice between enslavement to the master race, expulsion or physical extermination following Biblical codes.

A few years ago, a settler leader and a former mayor addressed hundreds of settlers in Hebron, telling them in no unmistakable language that the way to deal with Gentiles in our midst is Joshua’s way, God’s way. In other words, genocide.

Hence, it is not far-fetched by any means to assume that Israel could embark on the unthinkable in order to complete what it did and tried to do the Palestinians in 1948 and 1967. After all, we are dealing with a psychotic, lethal entity that believes in sacred ethnic cleansing.

In the final analysis, more attention ought to be given to what Israel is doing, not just what Israeli leaders are saying? Until  recently, the Israeli justice system, which often functions as a mere rubber stamp in the hands of the military establishment  to approve inherently unjust policies against the Palestinians, is now being pushed aside as the Israeli government is introducing legislation that would prevent  victims whose land  and  property are confiscated from seeking redress before Israeli courts.

Even the Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who is not particularly known for giving hope for Palestinians who seek justice is being side-lined by a hawkish cabinet that is effectively transforming the West Bank into a wild west where patently thuggish Jewish settlers routinely savage and brutalize the helpless native Palestinian villagers and peasants, often with army troops looking on rather passively.

Israeli behaviour in the West Bank is more than irresponsible and destructive to whatever prospects for peace that may still  have survived years of Israeli arrogance, unilateralism and scandalous disregard for international  law.

It is crystal clear that this behaviour is decidedly criminal as ethnic cleansing in its various manifestations constitutes a crime against humanity.
 
The real question now is when will the EU and other countries, still not tightly fettered with the shackles of Zionist bondage, call the spade a  spade and act on it?

Or will they allow Israel to have its way, which means the continuation of violence and bloodshed and turbulence in one of the world’s most vital and volatile regions with unpredictable ramifications on world’s peace and security?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.